Chael Sonnen doesn’t think the fourth fight between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier will go any differently.
Ahead of UFC 264, many were torn of who would win, as McGregor promised he would finish Poirier this time out. At face value, it appeared he was taking the fight more seriously but it didn’t matter as Poirier dominated the first round.
Unfortunately, for McGregor, however, was the fact he broke his leg at the end of the first round. Yet, for Sonnen, he says nothing in that first round was competitive at all.
“There was nothing within that five minutes that we saw that was competitive,” Sonnen said when speaking with fellow ESPN analyst Max Kellerman (via MMAFighting). “You used to be able to really count on Conor McGregor, and by the way, I’m not kicking a guy when he’s down, I’m just discussing what I saw. You used to count on Conor to win the stand-up portion and [he was a] really hard guy to take down and you could never hold him there if you got him there. These are things you could count on.
“He’s not winning any portion of these fights, and I don’t bring that up to put him down,” Sonnen said. “I bring that up to tell you there is no need, at least from a competitive architecture, there is nothing here that warrants seeing these guys do it again.”
With Sonnen thinking the first round wasn’t competitive, he also doesn’t see a need to do the fourth fight. He thinks it’s clear Poirier is the better fighter and a fourth fight will go very similar.
“It was hard to see,” Sonnen said. “Conor is a very good fighter — not compared to Dustin Poirier. That’s the only point that I’m trying to make. Conor also had a lack of training. We were told this from his own side, he had a lack of focus. That’s when it was a choice. He was healthy and feeling good, he still chose to follow the distractions instead of the discipline.
“To attempt to guess the regression Conor is for sure going to show if he comes back in 18 months to 24 months as doctors are hypothesizing, things aren’t going to get a whole lot worse. If you leave there damaged, broken, you have two judges calling it a 10-8 round inside of five minutes, it doesn’t get a whole lot worse,” Sonnen concluded.
Conor McGregor is currently rehabbing his leg and Dana White has said he will return in one year.
